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 Business News | January 2008 
Fighting Foreign Fakes
 Omar Millán González - San Diego Union-Tribune
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| | Ponchos with NFL team logos were displayed for sale just south of the San Ysidro border crossing in Tijuana. (Charlie Neuman/Union-Tribune) | | |
Tijuana – Manuel Díaz likes the San Diego Chargers, especially during the NFL season, when he sells about 30 Charger items per week to drivers idling in the lanes at the San Ysidro border crossing.
“The most popular sellers here are the Chargers from American football and Dodgers and Padres in baseball,” said Díaz, who makes about $800 weekly.
Mexico is the NFL's second-largest market for merchandise sales and viewership, and the Chargers meet the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday in the playoffs, so Díaz's sales of goods with NFL logos and colors would seem assured – except in one respect.
Many of the National Football League and Major League Baseball items sold in Tijuana and throughout Mexico are counterfeit – a savings for consumers but a financial hit for the professional leagues and their manufacturing partners.
Some are made in Tlaxcala, Mexico, and brought to the border without the producers paying licensing fees to the leagues or owners of the licensing rights. Other items are made in China.
Díaz, 32, estimated that each week he sells at least 10 ponchos at $20 each, five throw blankets ($20 each), six or seven ceramic helmets ($5 each) and seven banks ($5 each), all with the Chargers logo. In addition, he sells six ponchos ($20 each) and eight blankets ($30 each) with baseball team logos.
Nearly 60 percent of all textile and clothing products sold in Mexico, including NFL and MLB merchandise, is counterfeit, according to a European Commission report.
The NFL said it loses tens of millions of dollars to unlicensed sales in Mexico, and a Major League Baseball official said the league loses “great sums” to bootleggers.
Iván Nava, a 24-year-old laborer, said he often buys a shirt, cap or other accessory with the logo of his favorite American teams at a popular Tijuana market.
He said he would like to buy an original, but if the bogus item appears to have the same quality, “why should I pay more?”
The sale of unlicensed merchandise – from Prada purses to “Spider-man” DVDs to Shakira CDs – is common in Mexico. The nation is the third-largest market for counterfeit CDs, videos and clothing, after China and Russia, according to the European Commission.
The San Ysidro port of entry is where the sales are perhaps most deeply rooted in Tijuana, given the tens of thousands of people who cross there daily. At least 100 shops in the area sell fake sports merchandise, according to an informal survey of salespeople.
There can be a big price difference between a licensed item and a bogus one. A shopper can buy a throw blanket with an NFL team logo for as little as $12 at the border, while the original costs upward of $25 at chain stores in the United States.
Combating counterfeit items has been a priority of the NFL since the league opened an office in Mexico City nine years ago, said Geraldine González, its senior manager for public relations there.
“We know that 20 million people in Mexico are aware of the NFL brand,” she said. “This leads many people to want to buy an item of clothing connected to the NFL, either in a regular store or at places where counterfeit items are sold.”
In 2006, Mexican companies licensed by the NFL made nearly $18 million in sales of league-approved items.
“It's in our interest to protect our license holders,” González said.
Mexican authorities have conducted three or four operations against sellers of fake NFL merchandise in the past 18 months, mostly in the Mexico City area.
González said the bogus items come from China and enter through the Mexican port of Manzanillo, while others are made in Mexico.
The NFL uses tactics, such as putting a hologram on its packaging, to guarantee authenticity. But even those measures may not be enough.
Salesmen at the border hawk blankets with the Chargers logo and colors, for instance, in packages that have a hologram and labeling in English indicating they're NFL-approved.
At a glance, it's impossible to tell whether they're legitimate products, whether they are real products stolen somewhere along the distribution pipeline or whether the whole lot – holograms and all – are elaborate fakes.
Violations of trademark rights, or pirating, are not automatically investigated under Mexican law. The license holder needs to file a complaint with the authorities before an investigation begins.
Until now, the only franchise-holders that have pursued legal action against pirate manufacturers in Baja California are motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson and World Wrestling Entertainment, according to the office of the attorney general of Mexico, which is responsible for prosecuting these crimes.
Harley-Davidson's complaint, filed in November 2006, resulted in the confiscation of nearly 1,000 articles, mainly jackets and wallets, from shops along Tijuana's Avenida Revolución.
The complaint presented by WWE against pirate sellers who set up shop in July outside the Playas de Tijuana bullring also resulted in the confiscation of about 1,000 items.
Alfredo Becerril Almazán, an official with the Attorney General's Office in Tijuana, said that famous makers are making an effort nationally to file complaints. However, the problem is complicated, he said.
Becerril said the Mexican government is working on legislation that would make pursuing trademark infringement cases automatic instead of investigators needing to wait until a complaint is presented.
Most of the complaints by major companies are filed in Mexico City, where the Attorney General's Office is based. The agency's Baja California office has received no complaints thus far from the NFL or MLB.
But that could change.
González, the NFL's spokeswoman in Mexico, said that “we're updating information on places where the sale of pirate merchandise has increased, so operations could be launched throughout Mexico, including in Tijuana.”
Abraham Nudelstejer, sports editor for the Union-Tribune's Spanish-language newspaper, Enlace, contributed to this report. |
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